Is it possible to manipulate iTunes this way?

July 24, 2009 2:50 PM

I'm putting together this jamband playlist for an overseas trip. Pretty simple, right?

There was a question asked about manipulating iTunes playlists to shuffle whole albums at a time, but this is a little more specific, and I'm on a PC. Windows XP.

What I am looking to do (but cannot figure out a way to do) is to have a shuffle-able playlist that shuffles groups of songs instead of one song at a time. The groups are basically jam sections of a show, and I have several shows. This make sense yet? I would like to group together 2-4 tracks in a group (as in 4 separate tracks that play gapless) and shuffle the groups so that the groups of songs shuffle, but the individual songs do not.

Is there a way to do this at all?

Thanks!

posted by Jim On Light to media & arts (5 comments total)

You were a bit vague (possibly intentionally) about whether you want to use an MP3 player (used in a generic sense if you're talking about Ogg Vorbis or whatever) or software on your PC.

I use foobar2000 under Windows and it has the option to shuffle your playlist by folder. All you'd have to do is put your files into different folders based on which you want to play together. As it plays, it will play all the songs in one folder before moving to the next randomly-selected folder.

However, as I read more about this, it turns out that it does a pseudo-shuffle to prevent repetition before all the songs have been played. It also has a random mode which doesn't avoid repetition, but it can't do that on a by-folder basis. I guess it depends on how random you require your playlist to be.

Another option would be to use a program to merge your song groups into single tracks, which you could then shuffle normally. Again, foobar2000 will do this (the conversion), though there are obviously plenty of other programs which will as well.
posted by stufflebean at 3:07 PM on July 24

It looks like you can do this when you first import songs from a CD by choosing Advanced-->Join CD tracks.

I'm still trying to figure out how to do it with an existing .mp3 or .aac file...
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:10 PM on July 24

Splice them together in groups using something like Kristal, so that each file reads like a REALLY long single track. If you're dealing with files already in M4V format purchased from iTunes, then you'll need to transcode them with something like Handbrake into a format that Kristal can edit.

I'm sure someone else here will come up with a more elegant solution as I type this, but this way is cheap and will probably work.
posted by EnsignLunchmeat at 3:10 PM on July 24

Seconding EnsignLunchmeat. I use Audacity to string segments into a single track. It takes only a few minutes and helps avoid annoying gaps between tracks and misordered segments.
posted by prinado at 3:28 PM on July 24

But to answer your question directly: No, you cannot do that with only iTunes. Sorry.
posted by GatorDavid at 5:07 PM on July 24